BU student fails to make it across Comm. Ave.

The Daily Free Press reports the student was thrown into the air when hit by a car near the BU East T stop around 12:30 p.m. today, but that she was conscious when taken away by EMTs. The driver was not cited.

Whatever happened to the thing about speed limits depending on ones ability to safely stop? As in, if you're in the forest, and the sign says 50mph, its unsafe if you're going at 45 and cant avoid a deer?

Isn't it the same in the city? If you can't safely stop for a pedestrian carelessly crossing, you're going too fast?

No? Go see what that's like and report back. Constant game of student frogger, with massive jaywalking and headphones and all sorts of there-but-for-the-grace-of-Darwin improvised street crossing techniques.

I don't know what happened in this particular case, but I'm utterly surprised that it doesn't happen more often given the atrocious behavior of the students and the speeding frustrated drivers.

But the speed limit is 35mph. Isn't that a bit too fast for a college campus? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isnt 35mph the limit on Storrow (it may be 40, I cant remember). Memorial is 35. Mass Ave is 25mph. I'd say comm ave is more like mass ave than the river highways.

Also, there are two active high schools in that stretch of road, and I don't remember any signs proclaiming the 20mph school speed limit, much less enforcement of it.

Make the BU bridge cops enforce the 20mph speed limit (for the academy high school) and watch the complaints of how dangerous that intersection is go away.

1. BU doesn't give students much time to change classes, so they dash across without thinking
2. The students don't even have Sesame Street skills for street crossing, and BU doesn't seem to care
3. The city expects the road to be a major highway and doesn't want to acknowledge that there is a pedestrian problem or do any traffic calming or drop the speed limit accordingly.

I agree: the speed limit is generally too high for the way people (not cars - people) use that road. But the city also should have much better pedestrian accommodations in place and BU should give students more time now that the campus has sprawled out over a large area. Some west-coast style jaywalking enforcement with Toronto penalties would help, too.

Safely crossing Comm Ave takes at least three or four minutes. If you only have ten, jaywalking is a temptation, as is sprawling out to get on the curb around the hoards.

BU students I shared space with told me that they dashed across because 10 minutes was not nearly enough to wait for the lights. Some were, at the time (mid- to late-1980s), lobbying for 15 to 20. I'll take their word for it.

given that the driver was not cited, I'd say the driver was driving safely. Guess what, drivers in the city don't drive 15 mph on the open road with clear visibility. They assume people have enough sense to look both ways and obey traffic laws.

They never cite the driver. I see people speed down Comm Ave all day long. It's stupid, frankly. Get on Storrow in the Back Bay if you want to go fast. Comm Ave is for pedestrians. What the hell do you expect when 30,000 people try to shuffle from building to building in 10 minutes every hour and a half?

I'm still waiting for the state legislature to write a law against running red lights. Cause it ain't illegal far as I can see.

I don't agree that the solution is building a dozen of pedestrian bridges is the solution nor the best use of money. BTW, did you know that each pedestrian bridge in this day and age cost well over a million dollars. Not to mention that a pedestrian bridge is made to serve more for the car than the pedestrian by making Comm Ave into more of a highway and I don't agree that's the direction that Comm Ave should be going either.

Did you even read the article? She was chatting with friends, who stopped (presumably because they didn't have the light). She didn't stop (presume whatever reason you want) and was hit. If you have ever travelled Comm Ave or Huntington Ave during the middle of the day, you know exactly what happened, because it has almost happened to you.

Until these young pedestrians realize that they are not special snowflakes, like their parents always told them, there will be near misses and not-so-near misses.

The moral of the story? Don't blame it on the "fucking car", idiot. Blame it on the fucking pedestrian.

Molloy said the student was walking with two friends at the time and started to cross from the median on Comm. Ave. Her friends went back to the median when they saw a car coming, but the student did not get back in time, Molloy said.

Let's say for the sake of argument that this reporting is accurate. In that case, how can you be so sure that it's the pedestrian's fault?

For the sake of argument, the reporting indicates she was struck eight feet west of the crosswalk (eight feet farther from the corner). This crosswalk is also regulated, and the driver was not cited for running a red light. If the driver had a green, the pedestrian had a stop hand. It is clearly jaywalking. That two out of three students deemed that jaywalking to be unsafe could be considered a sort of 'reasonable person' test. These facts indicate that it is the pedestrian's fault.

That said, I agree with others that the speed limit there should be lower, and I wish the young woman a speedy and complete recovery.

This is precisely the point- she was away from a crosswalk, traffic had the right of way, two out of the three stepped back... And yet the car-haters here just cannot see past their own bias to see these facts.

I don't drive often, but when I do I am always amazed at the brazen lack of self-preservation among my fellow pedestrians. And the crossings at BU and NU are particularly bad.

Did you even read my post? I’m not interested who is at fault. I am interested in calling people out who want to attribute negative personality traits to people they don’t know and who have just been hit by cars.

They really need to teach these kids some more pedestrian safety. I'm constantly amazed by the things I see, not only unsafe but inconsiderate. I've got a theory that a big problem is that the student population is constantly recycling and so you've got new people, most of them from suburbia, coming in who have no idea how to be a pedestrian in a city.

They've either been driven, or have drove themselves everywhere up to the point they arrive on campus. The most walking they have experienced in any one day has likely occurred at a shopping mall. I'm not even being snarky and smug here.

Hopping from parking lot to parking lot to parking lot to driveway every day for 18 years, only to be deposited in an environment that doesn't give a damn if they haven't learned to live outside the bubble of their (parent's) cars.

I live close enough to the BU campus to have seen innumerable instances of blithely unaware youngsters literally not break stride as they cross Comm Ave or one of its cross streets against the light. Honestly, it's like that Popeye cartoon where Swee'Pea is crawling all around the construction site.

Yes, there are plenty of Dumb Fucking Drivers in Boston. That does not excuse the Dumb Fucking Pedestrians. Or, just to make the circle complete, the Dumb Fucking Bicyclists.

My least favorite jaywalking pedestrian behavoir: 'I know I shouldn't be crossing the street but I refuse to accept any responsibility for it as I purposely stride across the street refusing to look anywhere but straight ahead regardless of oncoming or turning traffic.'

I learned to drive in New York City. For the most part, pedestrians there have the common sense to either cross with the light, or after looking to make sure there are no oncoming cars. Otherwise, vehicles just accelerate right at them, honking the whole time.

You would love Toronto. Nobody jaywalks. It's great.
Even if it is 3AM, without a moving vehicle in sight for miles, people will not set one foot off the sidewalk without a crosswalk and the walk signal.

The group, crossing against traffic that had a green light, apparently did not notice a westbound Volvo driven by Ivan D. Ross, a student at the Graduate School of Management. ...

Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore expressed concern and sympathy for the injured student, saying he hopes she will soon be well. "I should also take this opportunity to remind students that we should never take our safety for granted, even when it comes to little things like crossing the street,” he says. "It's very important that we look both ways and really see what's coming. Sometimes a little patience goes a long way."

I want to note one more thing on the pedestrian issue. As a BU student, I noticed a long time ago of the Comm Ave mentality. It is not just student being from suburbia or (for those who really hate us) just really dumb kids. You come here and find yourself picking the pattern of all the other kids.

Until I read that article, I only thought about the mentality, but that article had a good point. The crosswalk system sucks. Look at Harvard Square with Cambridge's system versus ours and you can definitely notice that our system does not encourage student to abide by the lights. Unless you think non-parallel crosswalk lights, under 10 second of white cross lights (with about 7-8 seconds of don't walk light), and ineffective buttons is a workable system to you. Especially when you go Harvard Square and see how those lights works.

Thanks for the intelligent comment. The system is screwed up but we expect everybody to compensate with extraordinary moral, intellectual or physical abilities.

Many towns and cities in Europe have scrapped the crosswalk/traffic light system for the concept of shared space. The word for it is "woonerven". For instance many of the drivers on Comm Ave would accept slowing down for students crossing wherever, if they were not racing for a green light. In addition you might do away with the fences along the Green line which concentrate crossing in certain areas.

The European cities which have done this DO NOT HAVE HIIGH SPEED THOROUGHFARES NOR A CAR FIRST CULTURE.. Crosswalks and signals were created in this country because back when there were no cross walks or signals AND FAR FEWER CARS ON THE ROAD, people were getting run down in droves!.

Until they are building the crosswalks with invisible force fields I think the system could use other kinds of improvement.

It would be dangerous without the signs signals etc. That's the point. If you take away the moral advantage of running somebody over outside the crosswalk then they have to slow down.

If you haven't noticed this city is already way beyond its capacity in traffic. You can drive across town during rush hour only through the sympathy of drivers who know how bad it is and have decided to decrease the pain of the world a tiny bit by letting you make a left instead of honking at you and blocking the box. Why can't that be the general attitude instead of default bitchiness?

Green means go. Red means stop. Yellow is caution. That goes for pedestrians, drivers and bikers. Period. If you don't follow these simple rules you are taking your life in your hands, plus effecting others who obey the laws who then have to deal with the accidents you cause.

I hope the girl is ok. We need better crosswalks, every place.
My daughter was hit in front of her high school. She played field hockey and loved every minutie she could play. She was hit the same way, bad timing. Please go see your friend, she needs you to have the strength to get better. My daughter is mental unstable cause she was hit so hard. Know one supported her after she couldn't play any more.I
Take care of each other.
Stop, look, and listen, cause you are the hopes and dreams for a better tomorrow.

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